10:30 am | 1 recommendation | Be the first to comment
Originally published on March 11th, 2008.
The music industry has been bleeding out for nearly a decade now, and last week Trent Reznor drove yet another nail into its coffin.
The frontman for Nine Inch Nails, Reznor cut his teeth forging goth-metal and industrial techno over twenty years, selling tens of millions of records to angsty teens bored with grunge. Now, at age 42, Reznor is joining the ranks of artists moving away from the major labels and helping to rewire the music industry for the digital age; and unlike armchair industry critics, he's experimenting in real time, with very real models.
On March 2, Nine Inch Nails released "Ghosts I-IV," a 36-track instrumental collection available directly from the band's Web site. The complete album can be downloaded for as little as $5, and every bit of that revenue belongs to the band. Oh, and there is revenue: at least three quarters of a million dollars in the first two days, and that's not even counting the $5 downloads. Reznor has engineered an alternative way to give fans what they want. In return, they are paying for it. Music execs, take notice.
Reznor's pricing structure offers fans choice, maximizing potential revenue across the varying strata of fandom. It's also inclusive, providing offerings for the die-hard groupie down to the experimental listener not yet ready to shell out hard cash. Nine tracks are available via download free of charge, and the complete 36-track album, including a bevy of digital perks like wallpapers and cover art, costs only $5. Ten dollars gets fans a download as well as a physical copy of the two-CD set. For $75, additional DVD and Blu-ray discs with multi-track and high definition stereo are included. But the instant success was a limited edition package, including vinyl records, Reznor's autograph and other paraphernalia, for $300. The 2,500 copies quickly sold out.
The hard download numbers behind the release are not yet available, but the impact is already apparent. It doesn't take a record company executive to figure out that $300 multiplied 2,500 times grossed the band $750,000 in two days. Even if the band spent, say, $35 per package in manufacturing costs, Reznor and company walked away with well more than a half-million dollars. Moreover, the band makes more money selling fewer albums than in the traditional model. Artists' royalties through a major label generally add up to ten percent of the sale of a $15.99 CD. At $1.60 per album in royalties, NIN would have to sell over 3 times as many albums to make the same bank.
Releasing an album directly to fans is neither new nor groundbreaking. Small-time acts have been producing their own records for years, and last year British alt-rock staple Radiohead released its "In Rainbows" album directly to the public via the Web, asking fans to pay whatever they wished. Frontman Thom Yorke said this model netted the band more digital revenue than all their previous releases combined, though the band has refused to release the numbers behind this experiment.
But Reznor does want to talk numbers. Once an outspoken critic of illegal file sharing, he had an epiphany a few years back. In a YouTube clip in which he urges fans at a concert to "steal and steal and steal some more," Reznor made clear his anti-label sentiments. Since then, he has been conjuring new ways for musicians to turn a profit in the wake of illegal file sharing. While record company execs carefully guard what's left of their bottom lines, Reznor has been experimenting, and at times bleeding a good deal of time and money in what appeared to be a realization of the nihilistic themes in his music.
Reznor's new model is more or less the culmination of simple trial and error. Last November, Reznor produced NIN tour alum Saul Williams' "The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust." Building on Radiohead's archetype, the artist allowed fans to download a free, low quality version of the album, or they could pay $5 for a high quality format, a price Williams and Reznor reasoned was equal to that of a good latte.
The results, in Reznor's own words, were "disheartening." At year's end, only 18 percent of those who downloaded the album had paid the $5. But perhaps more importantly, 154,000 people took the free download, far exceeding the reach of Williams' previous effort, which sold around 34,000 copies. While Williams waits to see if his current tour revenues spike on the wave of new exposure, Reznor is already testing his metal on his multi-tiered pricing model, mixing free content, plenty of non-music extras and the instant gratification the post-Napster era requires.
When the final numbers are released–and Reznor has indicated they will be–everyone in the record business will be paying attention. And while Reznor has not produced a silver bullet–after all, smaller, lesser-known acts cannot be expected to fetch $300 a pop for limited edition packages–he has made it clear that in the digital age, the old way of selling albums is trapped in a downward spiral.
For the record industry as we know it, 2008 really could be the beginning of the end. For musicians embracing the new individualism of Web 2.0, this may indeed be year zero.
10:22 am | 2 recommendations | 1 comment
Dubai, like Las Vegas, is a city of excess in the middle of a desert. But with the ungodly height of the 159-story (and growing) Burj Dubai, the unnatural symmetry of The Palm Jumeirah islands and the unabashed extravagance of the seven-star Burj Al Arab Hotel, Dubai is so steeped in its own impressiveness, so flush with starchitect projects, it makes even Elvis’s "Bright Light City" seem dim by comparison.In seaside, oil-rich Dubai, iconic structures are rising faster than builders can bestow titles upon them. Construction of the presently nameless sixth crossing of Dubai Creek (in classic Dubai understatement, the "creek" is an inlet reaching a mile wide in places) will begin in March. Upon its completion in 2012, it will link the Bur Dubai and Deira areas of the city, and at 2,188 feet long and 673 feet tall at its largest span, it will replace the 1,804-foot span of Shanghai's Lupu as the world's largest arch bridge.This project is more than just another landmark in the making for Dubai. It is a grand example of the frenetic pace at which the blooming metropolis in the desert is building infrastructure. Anticipating increased traffic in the area, the sixth crossing will accommodate 20,000 vehicles per hour via its twelve lanes, as well as 23,000 train passengers per hour along the center of the bridge via Dubai Metro's Green Line. It will also offer nearly 50 feet of clearance below to allow for navigation of even the most luxurious mega-yachts.When the entire six-phase construction process is finished, Dubai will not only boast the world's largest arch bridge, but 12 km of new roads and 22 intersections in the surrounding areas. The bridge structure will depend on the creation of an artificial landmass adjacent to Creek Island, the site of a planned cultural complex. Accessible from the bridge, it will feature libraries, museums and architect Zaha Hadid's much-anticipated opera house. Developments on both ends of the crossing will continue to grow in conjunction with the bridge, including Dubai Healthcare City, Dubai Festival City and International City.The form that follows all this function is no less splendid than any of Dubai's other architectural undertakings. New York City design firm FXFOWLE International modeled the bridge’s arches to sync with the acoustic wave dynamic of the future Hadid opera house. In addition, FXFOWLE senior partner Sudhir Jambhekar says the architecture takes into account local influences like the rolling sand dunes, the current of the creek and the lunar cycle -- making for an elegant, sweeping geometry that is both organic and sleekly modern. With a design concept evocative of its surroundings rather than built on the ruins of them, the sixth crossing may just span the chasm between Dubai's glut of contemporary flash and the fading natural beauty of an ancient city on the sea.
04:42 pm | 1 recommendation | 1 comment
When the National Science Foundation began a search for a firm to build a new research station in Antarctica, it passed over a handful of Alaska-based companies, turning instead to an architect in a more unorthodox locale. The NSF found its partner in the Aloha state, at Honolulu-based Ferraro Choi and Associates.
Nearly 20 years in the making, the $174 million Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station was dedicated January 12, an unintentional homage to the famed first climber of Mount Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary, who passed away just hours before (50 years earlier the New Zealand-born explorer had stood at the pole).
Originally, the NSF asked Ferraro Choi to save its existing station–a geodesic dome built in 1975 that was routinely under siege from snowdrift. But after repeatedly failing to find a tenable solution, the designers devised a fresh approach. To create a long-term habitat for researchers amidst the subzero temperatures, relentless winds and the destructive power of accumulating snow, the team came up with an architectural design that blended martial arts theory with aerodynamic engineering, essentially turning the pole's ruinous forces back onto themselves.
Perched atop 36 hydraulic columns 13 feet above the surface, the new station uses Antarctica's omnipresent winds to counter snowdrift by employing aeronautical design engineering. The profile of the station borrows its shape from an airplane wing, guiding and accelerating the near constant 10-15 mile per hour winds beneath the station, blowing away the snow accumulating underneath. When snow inevitably builds up (and it does; snow at the pole never melts), the structure can be winched higher in 10-inch increments, adding 30 years to the building’s life.
Ferraro Choi also found a way to design around the unstable movements of the very ground itself. The station's 65,000 square feet of space is arranged in two horseshoe-shaped units connected by flexible walkways that prevent the building from shearing apart as its glacial foundation creeps toward the ocean at roughly an inch per day. "You're on a mound of snow and ice two miles high," says company principal Joseph Ferraro. "It's not on any rock or terra firma. Literally, it's like designing a ship because ice behaves a lot like liquid."
Perhaps most impressive is the complex logistical supply train that made construction possible. Ferraro Choi's team had to leave the islands to carry out computer modeling in Guelph, Ontario, where specialty engineering consultants RWDI simulated Antarctica's persistent winds. As computer modeling advanced through the 1990s, so did the models, allowing the design team to virtually check every inch of the proposed structure for flaws. Materials were then tested at an Army Corps of Engineers facility in New Hampshire, the only feasible place with a chamber that dipped to negative 100 degrees Fahrenheit. From there each piece had to be assembled, marked, disassembled, then freighted to New Zealand. Over a string of 925 flights aboard LC-130 cargo planes—equipped with skis for landing gear——the pieces were delivered to the pole.
The result of the pan-hemispheric effort is a flexible, efficient, elevated city-within-itself, kept warm with five times the insulation of the average U.S. home.
Of course, Ferraro Choi didn't neglect the 750 people who will pass through the station annually. Researchers studying everything from astronomy to physics to biology have access to a gymnasium, a medical infirmary, television lounges, Internet, a hydroponic greenhouse and numerous sophisticated labs. In addition, the station boasts private rooms and a cache of beer and liquor. But despite the comfortable environment they created, Ferraro Choi has no plans to open an Antarctica bureau any time soon.
